Quotes from Anais Nin

One of my notes says: "Correct Anaïs' English." Do you want me to do that, or would Hugo consider that I am encroaching on his private domain?

For what always creates anxiety in me is the doubt of my own sanity. I always question myself: am I being over-sensitive, am I exaggerating?

Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one's courage.

I must revert again to the perpetual theme: in the criticism of Melville & Whitman, and even Poe, Lawrence revealed a magnificent force, an understanding beyond all criticism heretofore known. The roughness & simplicity, the apparent laziness of it is disarming. Underneath tho' a terrible power & penetration.)

Making new friends and partners, mid-life, is the greatest thing in the world. Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Don't worry about the faithlessness of women—you've got a Spanish wife now—famous for their faithfulness! (See Encyclopedias, histories, guide books.)

You . . . make me laugh talking about Casanova. You don't know yet what men are like, pardon.

Wear that beautiful dress you had on when you first came to Clichy. I want to see the white of your flesh against it. I want to commit excesses.

J'ai été bon quelquefois. Je ne m'en félicite pas. J'ai été mé- chant souvent; je ne m'en repens pas," writes Gauguin.

If in a dream I could break down and sob so bitterly when I meet my daughter it is only because I know, even in the dream, that I cannot really have her. When one lets so many years intervene one gets only ghosts.

I'm sick of this white poverty, the vulgarity of my daily life.

It was a period of drunkenness, of blindness, of living only with the hands and mouth and body.

Economy. Pleasure-pain bunkum.

And one thought of the French word for hostess, entraineuse, which meant to pull, to magnetize, to lure in her wake.

I refer to all you write about Cocteau, [Eugene] Jolas & Goethe—with the changefulness of tone, the mockery of the "pomp" in the next paragraph.)

At bottom I hate all this pampering we give each other, the moment we learn that another is ill. Why shouldn't one enjoy his illness too? One gets ill sometimes just to be alone for a while. It's a way the body has of conquering the mind.

I feel so many things growing–my individuality, my confidence; I feel lines of my character growing stronger. I'm really sprouting, springing up, with mixed feelings of tenderness and bitterness, faith and disillusion, hardness and softness. I have never felt so clearly that my Self is – obscurely and stubbornly self-made.

Could she love such an unstormy sky as his eyes, such a downy and untarnished skin, such a candid smile?

Altogether a noble form of self-deception, since the ultimate truth is that if a man is sensual, he will carry sensuality into his friendships too, into everything, including his enjoyment of music and painting etc.

There are times when nobody can help you, not even the one you love. You have to be alone. You have to be ill, and wallow in your illness. Your soul needs it.

Somehow in the whore the cold womb, constantly subjected to desire, produces a phenomenon. All the eroticism comes to the surface. The constant living with a penis inside of one does something fascinating to a woman. The womb seems to be exposed, to be present in every aspect of her.

The Lawrence book excited me too.

Noi non vediamo le cose come sono; le vediamo come siamo noi.

Seems to me you have escaped the fatality of repetition in your destiny by escaping cruelty in women. As I escaped mine by finding you, in place of my former penchant for dead or half-dead men! Did I leave my face powder & engagement book chez toi?